Do not beat your chest and roar in the office. Chimps lose their nerve and clear the spot. He beats his chest and bellows out a mighty roar. When a troop of chimpanzees invade Mr Silverback’s favourite nap spot, does he sulk away to the jeering of annoying chimps? NO. Start at seven, get the job started, and work your way to one – it may not even be necessary at all by that point. Just because you have to get seven levels of approvals doesn’t mean you have to start from approval number one. If you know where you need to get to, you have to know all the available paths to get there. That’s because he knows the mountain inside out, and if he needs to get to the spot fast, he’ll take the best short cuts there, even if it means charging through a couple of banana trees along the way. The barrel-chested alpha male of the mountain knows the best spots for a siesta on a hot, humid afternoon. Understand the process inside out then turn it upside down If mission objectivity is of paramount importance to you, then do what a gorilla would: This is counter-productive, silly and makes Mr Silverback grumpy. A project starts beautifully, the right people, the right motivation and just as you’re about to get to the goal-line, you get blindsided by the fact that your business case did not include a documentation that required you to document your progress –wait, what? You get delayed, the team loses steam and you spend the next week looking through your process documentation. We’ve all been subjected to this unfortunate process-evolution. Processes, what once was an integral part of systemic reliability, has now become a veritable minefield that could potentially lead to mission failure. Silverback gets his nap, there will be no muscular-ape tantrums and we are all the better for it. He cares not if it is blocking the path of weary travelers, or if he requires a permit for the use of said aromatic fruits. If he wants to take a nap in the middle of the jungle on top of aromatic pineapples, then SO BE IT. The silverback gorilla has no time for processes. How to get stuff done when operating in an environment that values the right process as opposed to the right thing to do – and how behaving like a hairy, mountain-dwelling beast helps.
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